


A Mad Tea-Party in the Abyss

by Maisunadokei1856



Series: Pandora Hearts Month 2018 [10]
Category: Pandora Hearts
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Be Careful What You Wish For, Canon-Typical Violence, Delusions, F/M, Madness, Obsession, Psychosis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-01
Updated: 2019-01-01
Packaged: 2019-10-02 01:10:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,650
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17254802
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maisunadokei1856/pseuds/Maisunadokei1856
Summary: In which Jack Vessalius was not late to Alice's tea party.





	A Mad Tea-Party in the Abyss

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Pandora Hearts Month 2018, Week 4 (Various relationships). The prompt was: "Tea Party".  
> This wasn't properly edited at the time it was posted, and some ideas were discarded for lack of time, so this might get heavily edited in the future.

i.

He had fallen down his own rabbit hole.

He had lost every notion of time, all awareness of his body and the space around him. The last thing he remembered was blood, a feeling of horror, and him falling to his knees just as a once lively city crumbled around him.

An eternity might as well have passed before his senses started to awaken, dragged into reality by a hundred broken voices:

_HE IS HERE… HE IS HERE_

_ALICE WILL BE SO HAPPY,_

_HE IS FINALLY HERE… !_  

He raised his head slowly, glassy green eyes traveling aimlessly through the toy-filled shelves of the foreign yet oddly familiar room.

“Oh, you’re finally here! You fulfilled your promise, didn’t you? I’m so happy!” 

His unfocused gaze drifted to set on the young girl, a bright existence of an otherworldly white. He felt he knew her, but still his hazy mind failed to provide a name.

_She appeared out of nowhere and stood before him, looking as though she didn’t belong to the same dimension._

_Lacie… ?_

No, not quite. Too much white. Not enough red.

The thought seemed to jog his memory, though.

“Alice…”

His voice came off raspy, fainter than a whisper, yet when she heard it enunciating her name, she laughed with sweet, sincere joy and blushed intensely. 

 _At last,_ he might’ve thought. _Less white, more red._

Alice reached out a hand to him, her smile unwavering, bright violets intently set on him.

“Come now, let’s get ready, it is almost time for our tea party!”  Jack blinked a few times. He had absolutely no idea what time it was, or what tea party she was talking about. But when he tried to take her hand, he found that he couldn’t move his own. Puzzled, he looked down and took in his own appearance for the first time.

He was on his knees, his favorite green jacket stained with the bright red of blood, and Glen’s head was resting in the crook of his right arm, cradled to his chest. On his lap was Glen’s body, missing its arms —and he avoided looking further, of fear of finding out what else it missed—, his own left hand clutching it hard enough for his knuckles to turn white —and wasn’t his hand smaller than he remembered it?—

He inhaled sharply.

Alice must have followed his gaze when he didn’t take her hand, because she calmly got closer to him and leaned down, her hand moving forward to grab his own that was on Glen’s back. Although his mind was too fogged to form any kind of coherent thought, he jolted away the moment his instincts registered her intentions, dragging Glen along and possessively tightening his grip.

Alice’s face filled with confusion at his sudden motion —or was that anger, or hurt?—, before it relaxed back into a serene smile he was too absent to define. She turned around, and walked in steps so silent that he didn’t notice when she got behind his back, crouching down on the floor and passing her arms around his waist.

He felt her gently resting her cheek against his back.

“You really loved him, didn’t you Jack? It’s fine,” Alice comforted, but got nothing but silence in return.

Had he really loved Glen? In truth, he didn’t know, he couldn’t tell at all; only that being by his side had been oddly comforting, that he felt a dark haze painfully spreading inside of him, and that for some reason he couldn’t release his hold, couldn’t let go.

Somewhere in the subconscious back of his mind, he heard a song; a familiar tune and a familiar voice, and the last memories of a dear soul he saw through a stuffed toy.

 _That dark haze’s name is_ **_Loneliness_ ** _._

“It’s fine, Jack,” Alice repeated, “you can keep him here, with all the other Dolls,” with all the other _Chains._

Jack didn’t release his hold, but curiously, his hand relaxed noticeably. Finally, he nodded, and the movement made a single tear fall on Glen’s blood-stained cheek.

The sight cleared his mind at once, and in a single, vivid instant, everything dawned on him. Everything he did and everything that happened, and a bloody outcome that can never be undone.

he had fallen into the Abyss and Lacie was nowhere to be found;

He had failed Lacie, hadn’t granted her wish and now she would be lonely forever;

He had failed Oswald, failed their friendship, failed to bring his sister back;

He had killed Glen. He had… _killed Oswald_.

And he hadn’t realized he had been crying all this time.

* * *

 

ii.

Alice loved Jack, loved him so. 

Jack had once made a promise to her, a promise that he would someday come to her and stay with her forever. 

Jack was beautiful and precious, with his bright smile and his bright clothes, with his gentle touch and his kind voice. But, as she was realizing, blood and tears suited him all the same.

She couldn’t remember what happened exactly, she forgot what she was doing before she suddenly felt an earthquake, and an abnormal, sickening flow of souls and bodies falling into the Abyss. And the next moment, he was right in front of her, in every point the opposite of the Jack she knew: a dull, tear-stained face instead of his bright smile; a mess of blood and dirt instead of his bright clothes; a fearful, possessive jerking motion instead of his gentle touch; a rough, unsure whisper instead of his kind voice. 

Gently, patiently, she had pulled at the strings of Jack’s mind, willing him back to his senses, until his eyes lighted with recognition and she made him put away his blood-stained jacket, and Glen’s body.

Alice hated Glen, hated him so. 

She hated him for taking Jack away from her, hated that even now Jack was clinging to him instead of taking her hand. But because it was Jack, because she loved him, she would allow it. Jack had, after all, killed Glen to come to her. Ultimately, Jack had chosen _her_. That’s why she was going to replace all that he lost in return, and make him smile again. Because even if she didn’t care about Glen (Glen who made her lonely and kept her prisoner in a tower), even if he hadn’t mattered to her, she knew he had mattered to others she held dear.

He had mattered to Jack, but also to…

Pain shot through her head and she gripped it hard, falling to her knees.

Wasn’t she forgetting something? Wasn’t she forgetting _someone_? Someone who mattered and whom she lost?

The world went still and dark around her shaking body as she struggled to remember, in vain. Nothing came to her, nothing at all; she felt like she knew of things she missed and things she wanted, but she couldn’t remember why she wanted them in the first place.

She had wanted Jack to come, but to what end? Was it really just to trap him forever with her in this deep, lonely pit? And what was that gloominess that tainted the warm and fuzzy feeling she got from him?

She wanted a red eye for Cheshire; it absolutely had to be red. But what did red eyes mean? _Who_ had red eyes? _Who_ should have owed that to Cheshire?

_…-lice, Alice…_

“Alice!” 

A voice pulled her back to a pair of beloved emerald-colored eyes. Jack’s hands were gently gripping her shoulders and she wondered for how long he had been calling her name —and wasn’t his voice supposed to be deeper?—.

When he noted the focused look back on her eyes, he seemed to relax and offered her, for the first time since he fell here, one of his usual calm smiles.

“You have a guest, Alice,” Jack informed, and she begrudgingly detached her eyes from Jack’s own, letting her gaze fall on that _Doll_ , the White Knight, and on Cheshire sniffing a half-unconscious human.

The next moment, the human came to himself and attacked Cheshire, who backed away in surprise. Eyes wide open, he let his disbelieving gaze wander around the room and the talking puppets, revealing a pair of vivid red irises that seemed to take even Jack’s breath away.

_At last, the red-eyed human was here._

Alice smiled and walked towards the man. With a single command, she silenced the dolls who were scaring him, and courteously introduced herself.

* * *

 

iii.

Kevin had a wish. Just one wish.

But to have it granted, he went as far as to make a contract to destroy a hundred other people’s wishes.

It had been a bloody path, and at its end, he found himself in a bright, strange room filled with toys, in the middle of which was a table arranged for a tea party. And there, he came face to face with a dazzling existence of the brightest white.

_The Intention of the Abyss._

She had introduced herself as Alice, and went to thank the Chain he contracted for bringing him here. And despite his unwillingness to trust her, to even humor her attempt at conversation by answering her questions on him, it looked like he couldn’t hide any of his secrets from her awareness. A simple contact with the White Knight that was his chain seemed to satiate her curiosity, and she turned to him with the joyful smile of a child and the cruel taunting of a demon.

She rubbed it all in his face: every misfortune, every failure, every crime, and he barely noticed when he attacked her and pinned her on the ground, his sword ready to come down and maculate that despised white with blood.

Yet, Alice’s cruel whispers continued, undisturbed, and her smile did not waver one second. But before he could bring down his weapon, a hand gripped his own, and he turned his head to find himself staring right at a blonde male who looked too old to be a boy, yet too young to be a man. His green eyes stared with disturbing focus into his own, completely immersed in them, and he wondered why he hadn’t noticed his presence until now.

“Now now, please don’t fight.” his smile didn't hold a hint of malice, and his voice sounded serene, soothing, as though he was just keeping his two favorite children from fighting each other over an old toy, and yet…

That person who apparently stood before him… Where was he truly?

Beside him, he heard Alice let out a giggle full of amused affection, apparently neither minding the blonde’s interruption, nor missing his intent stare into Kevin’s own eyes.

“Do you like them, Jack? I’m glad!” Alice exclaimed, and he instantly felt like he was suffocating, the air around him heavy with a toxicity he heard one of the dolls define as the power of the Abyss. Weakened, he barely noticed Alice escape from under him and Jack’s hand removing itself from his own, when suddenly, all he could see was red, and all he could feel was tearing pain.

“They are the reason I called him here after all; I need his eyes for Cheshire!” 

The girl’s voice was drowned in his own screams, and his lungs burned, the extreme pain in his eye making him choke every time he tried to breath in. Eventually, after his screams died out, he could still make out Alice’s giggles, and when, through his pain, he opened his remaining eye, he was greeted by the gruesome sight of the blood-stained girl holding up his eye and laughing insanely.

Behind her, the blonde’s eyes had lighted so brightly that it looked like his soul just returned to his body. A pink blush colored his pale cheeks, and his smile was brighter than ever. He gazed at Alice with sick captivation, his eyes fixed on her figure and yet looking like he was seeing something, or maybe _someone_ else.

But Alice, too engrossed by the red she was holding and the red that stained her, remained oblivious to the boy’s bewitchment and delusions, and her attention was only caught when she felt his cheek on her shoulder and his arms tenderly wrapping around her.

“So you were here all along weren’t you? I have finally found you…!”

That seemed to suddenly put an end to her hysteria, and the moment she registered her surroundings, her pale face took on an expression of pure rapture that mirrored perfectly the blonde’s own. She giggled sweetly.

“Come now, Jack, “ Alice put her hands on the other’s arms and moved around to face him, “let’s dance!” 

And the next moment, they were in each others’ arms, rising from the ground and swirling through the air, Kevin and his eye all but forgotten.

With every step, every spin, the blonde’s existence shifted; from a boy to a man, then from a man to a boy, constantly defying the hands of time. Alice’s eyes never left his, never seemed to notice something was amiss, even as she needed to look down to keep the eye contact, and as his hands became too small to hold hers. But they would soon whirl in the other sense and suddenly, he would start growing again until he looked the same age as Kevin.

A graceful, disturbing madness. An intoxicating valse. 

Dolls and cups of tea were flying, and the clock in the middle of the room remained firmly pointing to the same hour, to the time of afternoon tea.

A single bright red, disbelieving eye stared in shock, wishing this was a nightmare, yet fully aware a nightmare could never be this awful.

A warped clock; a human shaken free from time and space, his eyes staring into the space and reflecting the void, his existence simultaneously tangible and eluding.

A blind cat with a human shape, for the sake of which his own eye has been sacrificed; flying around his mistress, faithful like a knight.

Dancing, talking, laughing dolls; their number too great to be counted, their voices too broken, too discordant for a sane man to stand.

And in their midst, their otherworldly host: ethereal whiteness, all gentle smiles and proper manners and bloody, cruel insanity.

Did he lose his mind to see such things? Or was he the only sane person here?

Or were they all mad, including himself?

If there was something he knew at least, no matter in which reality or in spite of which insanity, it was the reason he was here. He could never lose sight of that, would never allow himself to.

_I’ll give you my other eye, if that is your wish._

The Abyss’ power felt poisonous and restrained him, but he still found the strength to rise and scream, in spite of the excruciating pain.

_You can take my arms and legs if you need to._

Kevin had just one wish. One wish that justified him destroying a hundred others, and in the face of which his body and his soul were not a price too great to pay.

So please h _ear my wish, Intention of the Abyss, no, Alice!_  

But the Intention of the Abyss wasn’t listening, and Alice couldn’t hear anymore, too enraptured in her fantasy of forest-green eyes and innocently twisted passion.

* * *

 iv.

The dreaded red-eyed Reaper, his sword dulled, his eye gouged, and his face smeared for once with his own blood.

The pitiful blood-stained Knight, who slew hundreds and saved no one, his desperate plea falling on deaf ears.

For a human to be trapped in the Abyss meant to shift under its influence, to turn into a Chain —unless the power of the Abyss had already made you into a worse abomination, one that cycled endlessly between childhood and adulthood.—

Eventually, the Mad Hatter joined the dance.

And thus, the mad tea party went on forever.


End file.
